[bscphil]

Maybe? It depends on your requirements. Don't most experts recommend extreme caution with cryptography approaches and software that's less than a decade old? Has that changed? Do we move fast and break things now too?

Would also like to hear your thoughts on why / whether Signal and Wire are actually good recommendations.

[tptacek]

I'll tell you what I don't understand. I don't expect random engineers on HN to be especially crypto-literate, nor should they be: it's a super-specialized field that demands a lot of spare storage capacity in your brain, and a lot of us had enough algebra after Algebra II in 10th grade. Engineers who specialize have a whole huge variety of things to pick: machine learning, distributed systems, optimization, network algorithmics, graphics, systems security, you name it. There's no reason a significant number of people here should have to know what Noise or SPAKE2 is.

What's weird is: if you don't know what any of this stuff is, why would you feel the need to express strong opinions about it? Is it really your belief that intuition and a drive-by reading of some slides on Github page can bring you up to speed with the field? I read every "Call Me Maybe" post and I absolutely do not think I'd have a chance in hell at getting a distributed commit protocol right. Hell: I "specialize" in cryptography and feel the same way about crypto protocols!

My thoughts about Signal and Wire are that I did a good job of relating in the post you're talking about what I think about Signal and Wire.

[bscphil]

I'm not sure what this is in response to, actually. I'm not expressing any particular opinion about cryptography. I have no opinions and I defer to experts. One thing that I have heard experts say is that we should be very hesitant to use new protocols and software in areas in which a maximum of security is needed.

So I have no opinion of Wormhole, other than to say that (1) it is new, and experts I have listened to in the past say to be wary of new approaches, and (2) it (according to its own documentation) has some rather extreme limitations that make it arguably not a good fit as a general purpose solution to encrypted file transfer.

> My thoughts about Signal and Wire are that I did a good job of relating in the post you're talking about what I think about Signal and Wire.

As I don't think I have referred to any post by you, I don't know what you think about those solutions. If you are referring to the Latacora article (I think you wrote it, but I'm not sure because it doesn't specify its authors), it says (IMO) very little about the merits of Signal and Wire compared to other systems, and nothing at all about the specific criticisms I made in my comment you originally replied to.

[tptacek]

What experts are you listening to? Are they telling you to use PGP in 2019?

[bscphil]

Why do you keep nitpicking tiny aspects of what I'm trying to say? GPG sucks. Everyone agrees it sucks. The consensus of experts is that you should avoid it where possible. I have not denied any of that.

The problem is that some experts love to suggest alternatives that have severe limitations that GPG (for all its very real faults) does not have.

For 1 to 1 encrypted chats, I would trust Signal provided that OWS having my phone number (and that of my conversation partner) was not a security risk, and that I'm not facing a nation state level adversary who could take over OWS servers and push a compromised version of the app to me via update mechanisms.

In my opinion those are serious limitations that GPG does not have. And this is an area in which we're talking about the most developed alternatives (other than signing). Other areas like encrypted file transfer and group chat are even worse.

[hiq]

With your requirements from another post in mind:

Regarding file transfer, 'age' was mentioned in a previous thread. Problem is that it hasn't been implemented yet... https://docs.google.com/document/d/11yHom20CrsuX8KQJXBBw04s8...

Regarding a secure group chat messenger with your two requirements mentioned, the consensus (among experts that have given their opinion here) seems to be that there is currently no such solution (I guess some versions of Wire could fit given that they seem to have on-premise deployment: https://wire.com/en/pricing/#pro/).

[bscphil]

Thanks for the response. That matches my understanding of the situation. I'm not familiar with age, but I hope it turns into usable tool for some of these use cases, particularly asymmetric encryption.

Wire might eventually get there, but as far as I know they still haven't implemented federation, so (though I might be wrong) even their paid deployments would be limited to some particular network on which both conversants had accounts.

[tptacek]

The opposite of what you're saying is true. File transfer is especially straightforward. Group chat on secure messengers works far better than it ever did with PGP. And, incidentally, there is no 10-year rule on cryptography.

[bscphil]

Good! So what are the solutions? What file transfer approach

(1) Doesn't require an active connection between sender and receiver over the internet for the duration of the transfer (2) Doesn't require a shared secret

What group chat secure messenger

(1) Doesn't rely on a central server operated by someone else (2) Doesn't use PII as the basis of a user's identity

These are what I regard as the most basic of requirements for each need. PGP provides them (in broken, hard to use ways); others have struggled. If you actually do have solutions here, rather than just complaints about PGP, I do want to hear them. But you've taken this thread down a rabbit hole rather than respond to my original point, which was about the limitations of the suggested alternatives.